Irish VAT Charged by Freight Company to UK Established Business

We use a freight company to deliver our goods from GB to our ROI customers. One of our customers do not have a PVA account and the freight company have invoiced us for the VAT owed on the value of the goods delivered at 23% (plus facility fee). Can we recover this VAT within our GB VAT return or is there any other method we can use to obtain a refund?

You cannot reclaim Irish VAT on your UK VAT return, indeed you can only ever reclaim UK VAT on a UK VAT return. So this will just be an irrecoverable amount reducing your profit margin on this sale. Your need to be clear with your freight agent as to the Incoterms, these determine who pays the import VAT, even if your Irish customer does not have a PVA, it is still possible for the Irish customer to be liable for the VAT but in the absence of clear instructions from you, the freight agent will go for line of least resistance, treat you as liable for the Irish VAT and recharge it back to you. You may be able to go back to the freight agent and ask them to amend their import entry, but they may charge a fee for this and so depends on how much Irish VAT is at stake and then for the future, ensure that the shipping instructions are that the customer pays the import VAT whether they have a PVA/Irish VAT number or not.

Hi Swanny27
Unfortunately you are unable to recover the VAT on your UK VAT return as it relates to Irish VAT.
If you are the named importer of the goods in Ireland then you will be making a supply of goods in Ireland and therefore you would be required to register for VAT in Ireland , charge local Irish VAT and recover VAT incurred in Ireland.
If your customer is the named importer of the goods in to Ireland then only this customer would be able to recover the Irish VAT if they are VAT registered in Ireland.
Thank you